Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho is hoping his goal-shy team rediscover their goalscoring form in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League quarter-final at the Santiago Bernabeu against Turkish giants Galatasaray today.
Cristiano Ronaldo kept up his imperious form with his 43rd goal of the season in Saturday’s 1-1 draw away at Real Zaragoza, but the lack of goals from other areas of the pitch concerns Mourinho.
“Perhaps that is one of the differences this season,” he said. “Last season, with four chances we would score three goals, we were scoring goals with great ease and the only one who has maintained a similar average has been Cristiano.”
Indeed, since the turn of the year, Ronaldo has nearly outscored his teammates single-handedly with 21 goals to their combined 23.
However, Mourinho is particularly concerned about the form of strikers Karim Benzema and Gonzalo Higuain.
“All the others have gone down in their numbers of goals and obviously the team feels the consequences,” he said. “The goals will come. If they don’t arrive on Wednesday, then we hope they will do so in the next game, but it is a reality that we are having some difficulties in scoring goals.”
Mourinho also indicated that Iker Casillas would not be involved against the Turkish champions, despite returning to training following a hand injury.
Raphael Varane and Fabio Coentrao are expected to return after missing the Zaragoza game with slight muscle injuries, while Xabi Alonso, Sami Khedira, Mesut Ozil and Angel di Maria will also start after being rested at the weekend.
Mourinho said while some might have felt Galatasaray were one of the easier teams to draw, he was not of that opinion.
“This is a team that is used to the Champions League and who not only have two former winners of this competition, [Didier] Drogba and [Wesley] Sneijder, but also players who have played for other top clubs,” he said.
Both Drogba and Sneijder have played under Mourinho at Chelsea and Inter respectively, and Sneijder has said he enjoyed the best time of his career under the Portuguese in Italy.
“Mourinho is like a second father to me,” he told Spanish sports daily Marca. “He is a machine. In football we have players who are machines and since I have known Mourinho, we can say we have managers who are machines. He is a very special person for me.”
The Netherlands international also believes that his side have a chance of progressing if they can ensure the tie is still alive for the return leg in Istanbul.
“For us, it is very important to arrive at the game in Istanbul with a realistic chance of going through. If we manage to arrive here with the tie still open it would be incredible,” Sneijder said. “Our fans always support the team a lot and anything can happen.”
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
Switzerland’s Riola Xhemaili on Thursday scored a last-gasp goal to salvage a dramatic 1-1 draw with Finland that sent the joyous hosts through to the quarter-finals at Euro 2025, and heartbroken Finland home. Switzerland, who needed only a draw to advance based on goal-difference, finished second in Group A behind Norway to go through to the knockout round for the first time and are to face the winners of Group B, which would be world champions Spain as things stand. “I think we set ourselves a goal on the pitch, to write history, to go into the knockout stages, which we’ve never
RSS